Month: January 2016

When looking into different technologies and methods used to make images I came across many interesting techniques.

Matthew Brandt takes photos of ‘Lakes and reservoirs‘ (on various cameras including his iPhone) and takes them home with him along with a small collection of water from that lake or reservoir. He then soaks the images once printed, in the liquid and over time the image degrades to leave an abstract effect which almost looks like a filter on the image.

Matthew Brandt – Fall Creek Lake OR 4

Matthew Brandt – Nacimiento Lake CA 3

Matthew Brandt – Lake Selmac OR 1

Matthew Brandt – Amercan Lake WA E3

I have also been looking at creative photographers such as Kim Keever and Mark Mawson, who have made images using water and acrylic paint. This results is an abstract, colourful, fluid image which I would love to be able to recreate in my own way.

Mark Mawson – Aqueous Fluoreau

Kim Keever – Abstract

Long exposure photography is something that has always intrigued me. I’ve only recently started experimenting with it but love the way it softens the water in an image and almost makes it look like a sheet of silk. Paulo Dias have made a lot of long exposure images of landscapes, towns and cities.

Paulo Dias – Light my spirit – self portrait

Paulo Dias – The Last Lighthouse

Here are some of the photos I took on Dartmoor when practicing with long exposures.

Looking back at this project, my series of final images and the research that led up to this, I believe it has a combination of strengths and weaknesses. I think my ideas developed through research and experimentation led to an outcome I am proud of. Practitioners such as Edward Weston and Angela Kelly helped to inspire me and therefore motivate me further.

I often find that when I put my heart into my work I am most pleased with the series of images that are a result. So, when I decided to work in my Grandmothers home, where I have so many memories it made me even more driven in this project. Although I am pleased with the outcome and the concepts I have portrayed through my images, I would like to look more into my Grandmas home in the future and perhaps into the other half of my family. Like, Sarah Michelson I was able to use objects to show the memories and stories behind them. However, taking inspiration from Angela Kelly I would, in the future, like to look at old family documents such as my Grandfathers medals etc that I could research further and make thought provoking images from.

In terms of the formal elements, I believe I was able to use tone, shape, perspective and implied texture. I used shadows to add depth and atmosphere to many of my images and kept a shallow depth of field on close up images, to keep the focus on the object and its shape and textures. I also used leading lines to emphasise the formal qualities.

Something I believe I did well when working on this series of images is taking ethics into consideration. I knew from the beginning that it was important to ensure my Grandma was completely happy with me doing this. Seeing as I was intervening in her space and taking photos of her home, I called her and talked her through everything I was planning on doing and gained her consent. As well as this, once I had taken the photos, I gave her a preview of all the photos I had taken so that she could tell me if she was unhappy with any of them being taken, seen by others and being put online. She gave me her verbal consent.

Edward Weston is someone my work has been heavily influenced by. When he first began making images, he began at his Aunts farm in Chicago and in the parks in that area. Later in life, he made images of everyday objects such as shells, peppers, cabbages and other close ups, focusing on their ‘rich textures’ and ‘sculpture-like forms’.

Edward Weston – Cabbage Leaf, 1931

Edward Weston – Shell,1927

In a similar way, I wanted to capture the form in the objects in my grandmas home, through the line, shape and texture.

I also took inspiration from Paul Outerbridge. Much of his work is ‘still life’ based and when making images in my Grandma’s home the outcome was many still life images. His images are made up of many different textures, shapes, shadows and are taken from many different perspectives leafing you questioning the semiotics of the images. I hope that my images do this too.

Paul Outerbridge – Cheese and Crackers, 1922.

Paul Outerbridge – Flowers in a Vase, American, 1926.

Something I tried to make a feature of this series of images is shadows. Ishiuchi Miyako made a whole exhibition titled ‘Postwar Shadows’ which not only used the form of shadows to her work but she also entwined her identity through the images therefore making them more personal. This is something I have endeavoured to do with my images. I chose to focus on something personal to me and that I am passionate about to create images that mean something and that I care about.

Ishiuchi Miyako – Apartment #19, 1977-7.

Ishiuchi Miyako – ひろしま/hiroshima #9 (Ogawa Ritsu), 2007.

Sundays at Sea by Angela Kelly is a series of images Angela made using a combination of images of her childhood family albums and letters, maps etc which are associated with migration, home and that album. After her father past away, she inherited his trunk (used when he was in the navy) full of trinkets, uniform, photographs and more. For this series, she recycled family photographs and captured them with objects, and artifacts that show her relationship with her parents and memories. This is very similar to the work i have produced for this project as she has chosen something so close to her heart to create her images. Like I, she focused on memories and feelings.

This led me to think about my Grandmother and the memories that I and other members of our family have of her and her home in Stonehouse, Plymouth. She has lived there for 30 years and built her life as we know it there. From ‘her’ chair, her shoes lined up in the hallway to her ornaments from over the years and her make up table. All of these elements of her home have form and meaning.

Before I went to her house to work on this series, I rang her and explained all of what I was planning and asked her if she was ok with this. Because of her being my Grandmother, I didn’t need to do much more than this.

I decided to make images in her house as a statement of the memories it holds. To capture a moment in time where many moments have passed over the years and even though there is not evidence of the memory itself an ornament, room or other object can trigger these memories and act as a portal to a past time.

I intervened in her environment to photograph the aesthetic elements that make up the home but are deeper than just the aesthetic. Some of the intervening included moving objects and adjusting lighting to create well lit photographs but also to show the elements in the correct way.

These pictures are from inside her two bedroom house by the Royal William Yard, Plymouth. I tried to capture the atmosphere in her home whilst also showing formal qualities such as tone, shape, line, perspective, the division of space and implied texture.

I began to think about my family and how precious the environment is to us. It is a place where we enjoy our days together and make memories. From memories I have of going for walks as a child to the newer memories playing with my youngest brother in the park. The following images aim to show my family in this environment (‘in our element’).

Dartmoor

Dartmoor

Dartmoor

Dartmoor

Dartmoor

In these photos i aimed to emphasise not only the elements around but also my family in these elements.

Ibrahim al-Koni, a Libyan writer said ‘Water cleanses the body and the desert cleanses the soul’.

When I first began making images for this module, I began by looking at the elements outside such as the landscape around me and the different elements that make up the environment I live in. This includes, water in the form of streams, puddles, lakes. Nature (trees, wildlife, flowers). Air – the sky in all its different forms. When doing this, I noticed ways in which man had intervened with these elements. Park benches, litter and fences are just some examples. Some of these are made to improve the experience of the environment for the community whilst others are careless dropping of litter which evidently ruin the experience for people. All of these have a varied form. I’ve attempted to capture these elements using the form of line, tone shape, space and texture.